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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23719492">Count on Revenge</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortunehasgivenup/pseuds/fortunehasgivenup'>fortunehasgivenup</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Good Girls (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Affairs, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Count of Monte Cristo AU, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Minor Character Death, Pining, Reunions, Revenge, Separation, Violence, Wrongful Imprisonment</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 22:08:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>9,655</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23719492</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortunehasgivenup/pseuds/fortunehasgivenup</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After spending years wrongfully imprisoned, Rio escapes Château d’If. Two things had kept him alive all those years - Elizabeth, the woman that he loved, and revenge on Dean, the man who had arranged for his arrest. Now free, he discovers that Elizabeth has married Dean and lives a life of luxury with her husband and son. Rio cannot forget and he has no intention of forgiving, no matter who might get in his way.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Beth Boland/Dean Boland, Beth Boland/Rio</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>164</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Count on Revenge</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><b>Warning</b> (includes spoilers if you aren't familiar with the story): Rio spends years in prison after being wrongfully accused of treason. There are mentions of him having been beaten. He has some scars as well as PTSD. Dean tricks Beth into marrying him. There's implications that the marriage has not been a pleasant one for Beth, but I haven't gone into detail.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Rio!”</p>
<p>He bends back down to kiss Elizabeth, letting her tug him into her arms.</p>
<p>“I do have to go,” he reminds her.</p>
<p>“But I don’t want you to.”</p>
<p>He smiles at her, brushes her auburn hair off her forehead. “I’ll be back,” he promises, lifting her hand to kiss the finger where he’d slipped that little twine ring that she’d made. “With a real ring. We’ll marry in the church. You’ll come to live with me,” he returns to kissing her lips, “yes, and Annie too.”</p>
<p>Elizabeth laughs, but she sobers quickly. “I love you,” she says against his lips, “more than anything else.”</p>
<p>—————————</p>
<p>Rio bolts upright from the dream, sweating.</p>
<p>He sets his hand over the scar on his shoulder, the one he’d received later that night when they took him to prison. Locked him up and thrown away the key.</p>
<p>Set him on his current path.</p>
<p>Groaning, he stands. Gathering the blankets with which he’d made his makeshift pallet, he puts them back onto the bed so the housekeeper won’t fret.</p>
<p>So that Mick won’t give him strange looks.</p>
<p>He’s been dreaming of her as of late.</p>
<p>Elizabeth.</p>
<p>The woman that he had intended to marry.</p>
<p>Who had sworn to wait for him.</p>
<p>In the days after he escaped the long shadow of Château d’If he had thought to be reunited with her.</p>
<p>Only to discover that she had married scarcely a month after he left.</p>
<p>To add salt to the wound, she’d married the same man who had arranged for Rio to die slowly in prison.</p>
<p>Mick had been the one to tell him, pity in his eyes.</p>
<p>Even now, months after learning of the betrayal, it burns in his throat and his belly like he’s just swallowed a coal. It makes his wound ache.</p>
<p>“You need to stop sleeping on the floor.”</p>
<p>Rio looks up from his desk, where he’d wandered while thinking of her, and sees Mick in the door with a tray of breakfast.</p>
<p>“And don’t say that you didn’t,” Mick says, depositing the tray with a crash onto the desk. “There’s no indent and the sheets are too neat. You need to learn how to sleep in a bed again.” He says it gently, but with a hint of reproach.</p>
<p>“You know why I can’t,” Rio mutters.</p>
<p>Years of sleeping on cold stone will do that to a man. Every comfort seems unreal to him. Back in the cell and then in the tunnels with the old priest, he had imagined that he would celebrate his freedom with a feast, lavish clothing, every luxury he had been denied. </p>
<p>He had vomited his first meal right back up.</p>
<p>It was Mick who had slowly re-introduced foods to his diet, plain and unseasoned.</p>
<p>But the bed was an ongoing argument.</p>
<p>One of several.</p>
<p>“You’re really going to go through with this?”</p>
<p>Ah, and there’s another.</p>
<p>Rio takes a bite of bread, chewing slowly. “Yes,” he says after swallowing. “You’ll do your part?”</p>
<p>Mick’s mouth thins, but he nods. “I told you that I would.”</p>
<p>“Then you can leave now.” Rio hates the harshness in his voice when he says it. His mother had always insisted that he speak with kindness. Another thing the prison had taken from him. Kindness. And his mother, who people said had died of a broken heart upon hearing that her son was not only a traitor, but dead.</p>
<p>That is one of many things that Rio lays at Dean Boland’s feet, one of many things that he blames the man for.</p>
<p>He dresses and leaves the house that he’s renting, plunging into the early evening revelries.</p>
<p>The boy should be at his uncle’s, but he and his friends have no doubt been drawn out by the sights and sounds of the carnival. Rio is counting on it and when he walks past the uncle’s house, he sees the chalk mark left on the wall by one of the thieves he’s befriended since being made a criminal. The boy - Boland’s son - has left.</p>
<p>Marcel should be following him even now. Vivienne will lead him away from his friends. Then the others will grab him and take him to the house that Rio had set up for this purpose.</p>
<p>He walks to the house and sees Vivienne leaning against the outer wall.</p>
<p>“That boy needs to be taught several lessons,” she tells Rio, straightening up.</p>
<p>Rio doesn’t ask what she means.</p>
<p>“He just followed me! What if I’d robbed him? Or killed him?” She pushes herself off the wall and follows Rio inside. “Fool,” she mutters.</p>
<p>Rio tosses her the promised payment. She catches it out of the air and disappears it into her dress somewhere.</p>
<p>“That concludes our business,” he tells her. “Your brother’s share is waiting to be delivered once I leave with the boy.”</p>
<p>Vivienne nods and fades away into the depths of the house.</p>
<p>The house had been chosen very carefully, for it sat above an entrance to a series of tunnels leading to the river.</p>
<p>For most, the smell would be enough to make them wrinkle their nose at the very least, but Rio isn’t bothered in the slightest as he descends into the cellar and then deeper. He frees his sword and steps into the passageway.</p>
<p>Marcel is right where he’s supposed to be, with a couple of his friends.</p>
<p>“I think perhaps we send a finger first,” he’s telling the boy, who is blindfolded and tied to a chair. “Which one would your mother recognize the easiest?”</p>
<p>“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Rio calls out.</p>
<p>It goes smoothly. He fights Marcel and his men. Seemingly beaten, they run down the passage that will lead them to the house, promising to come back with more men.</p>
<p>Rio uses his sword to cut the boy’s ties.</p>
<p>“Can you walk?” he asks. “Have they harmed you?”</p>
<p>“No,” the boy shakes his head, pulling off the blindfold. “I mean, yes, I can walk.”</p>
<p>“Then we should go. I don’t relish having to deal with a whole gang of thieves tonight.”</p>
<p>“Who are you?” the boy wants to know, following Rio down the path away from the house. They’ll come out onto the street near the main square, where Mick will be waiting with the carriage.</p>
<p>Rio just keeps walking. “You need only think of me as a friend,” he says.</p>
<p>“I’m Marcus.”</p>
<p>He understands what Vivienne meant about the boy needing to learn some lessons. He’s far too trusting.</p>
<p>Stopping, he turns to face Marcus.</p>
<p>Rio looks at the young man. He’s only fourteen and that fills Rio with a sense of betrayal deeper than the ocean. Had she truly moved on from him so quickly? Had she simply walked from his bed to Boland’s?</p>
<p>“How could I ever repay you?” the young man - Marcus, he reminds himself - says. “You saved my life.”</p>
<p>Rio just smiles, puts his arm around the boy’s shoulder. “You should be more careful about the company you keep. Do you travel with your family?”</p>
<p>Marcus nods. “An uncle. My parents are at home near Paris. My mother is, at least.”</p>
<p>They reach the street and Mick is waiting right where he’s supposed to. “My driver will take you home,” Rio tells the boy.</p>
<p>“But I don’t even know your name!”</p>
<p>Rio shakes his head. “Think of me as a man who was once a foolish boy, looking to prevent another from making the same mistakes.”</p>
<p>He melts into the street after that. Mick will tell the boy nothing, but Rio’s already seen to it that several of the maids at his uncle’s house are familiar with his crest, which marks the carriage’s side.</p>
<p>It is almost boring, the way that it falls into place so neatly.</p>
<p>The boy comes to the house the next day.</p>
<p>“Ah,” Rio greets him, coming down the stairs as though he’s on his way out, “young Marcus.”</p>
<p>The boy’s cheeks pink a little and Rio can see Elizabeth in him. He has to force himself to maintain eye contact. “I’m returning home,” he says.</p>
<p>“I hope your little adventure last night isn’t the cause.”</p>
<p>Marcus shakes his head. “No, no. It’s time for me to go. It’s nearly my birthday, you see. And I promised to return for the party. I’m turning fifteen.”</p>
<p>Rio nods. “A good age.”</p>
<p>“How can I ever repay you for saving my life?” Marcus asks, so earnest.</p>
<p>Rio just lets Mick slide his jacket onto his arms. “Don’t follow pretty young women into alleys,” he teases. “Now, I have an appointment. Can I return you to your uncle’s?”</p>
<p>Marcus waves off the help, going back out to the noisy street.</p>
<p>“You know,” Mick says softly, “the boy looks familiar.”</p>
<p>Rio’s hands curl into fists. Mick has seen the portrait of Elizabeth, the one he’d stolen upon his return. “We’ll leave in the morning,” he tells the other man.</p>
<p>—————————————</p>
<p>It’s difficult, traveling at a safe distance. Marcus and his friends are dawdling, drawing out their return and Rio can’t overtake them. It’s too much of a risk.</p>
<p>Besides, now that he’s met the boy, he can’t help but feel a little responsible for ensuring that he actually returns home rather than ending up dead by the roadside.</p>
<p>So he goes slowly, trailing Marcus all the way back home before slipping away to the estate that he’d purchased nearby. </p>
<p>It was amazing, the things that one could buy with trunks full of gold.</p>
<p>Rio waits nearly two weeks, arranging things around the estate, spending money in all the right places, before ensuring that his path meets with Marcus’ again.</p>
<p>“Count!”</p>
<p>Rio turns to face Marcus, coming out of the shop he visits every Tuesday. “Ah, Marcus,” he says, smiling. “Staying out of trouble?”</p>
<p>He looks sheepish. “I’m trying,” he admits with a little shrug. “That isn’t why I came out when I saw you. I wanted to invite you to my party.”</p>
<p>“Your birthday, yes?”</p>
<p>Marcus nods.</p>
<p>“I’m sure it will be wonderful,” Rio says, preparing to brush him off.</p>
<p>“You must come,” Marcus insists. “My parents want to thank you in person and I would like it very much if you were to attend.”</p>
<p>Rio pretends to consider it for a moment. He has every intention of going, has always intended on going.</p>
<p>“My mother in particular has begged that you come,” Marcus goes on, not realizing how deeply that statement cuts Rio.</p>
<p>Elizabeth.</p>
<p>He’s going to have to face her soon. He hopes that age has treated her poorly, that she scarcely looks like the woman that he remembers.</p>
<p>Rio looks Marcus in the eye and sighs. “Well, if your mother insists,” he teases, drawing a laugh from Marcus.</p>
<p>——————————————————————</p>
<p>His arrival is beautifully coordinated. Everyone has already arrived. His name has already been living on everyone’s lips for weeks at this point. They’re ravenous for information about him.</p>
<p>The mysterious count.</p>
<p>Marcus is the first to approach him. “Count!” he greets him with a smile. “Come, you must meet my parents.”</p>
<p>He doesn’t let himself look ahead to where the couple in question is standing.</p>
<p>“Mother, Father,” Marcus says, “this is the Count of Monte Cristo.”</p>
<p>Finally, Rio sets eyes on Dean and Elizabeth.</p>
<p>He bows politely to Dean before turning his attention to Elizabeth.</p>
<p>“My lady,” he says, taking her hand when she offers it.</p>
<p>Rio sees it in Elizabeth’s eyes, recognition as he lifts his head from kissing her hand.</p>
<p>She looks as though she’s seen a ghost. It’s unlikely she recognizes him. He was smooth faced when she knew him, smiled more.</p>
<p>“Thank you,” she says after swallowing. “My son tells me that you saved his life.” She turns her head and smiles at the boy, who is taller than her already. “I cannot repay what you have done. Marcus is everything to me.” Her expression is adoring and if Marcus’ smile is as genuine as it seems, the affection is returned.</p>
<p>“It was no trouble, my lady,” Rio responds. “I simply saw a young man in need of aid.”</p>
<p>Her gaze returns to him. “And yet you saved my life with his,” she says. At her side, her husband starts shifting from side to side, eager to move on, even without adding to the conversation.</p>
<p>Dean is worried about money.</p>
<p>Rio’s seen to it that his most recent investments have all gone bad. He should be worried, but not about that.</p>
<p>He simply nods to Elizabeth, then steps back and joins the party.</p>
<p>It’s exhausting, watching the revelry and sheer excesses around him. Finally, after spending too long in a cloud of perfume, Rio escapes to the garden.</p>
<p>The fresh air is a relief and an instant balm that makes him close his eyes and just breathe.</p>
<p>“Count?”</p>
<p>It’s her.</p>
<p>Rio swallows, steels his nerves, and turns.</p>
<p>“My lady.”</p>
<p>“You look familiar,” she says, staring at him.</p>
<p>Rio is thankful for the shadow that prevents her from being able to look too close. He, however, can see her very well. The years have been kind to Elizabeth. The girlishness has faded, leaving only the beauty that Rio had always known.</p>
<p>“Have we met before?” she asks.</p>
<p>He shakes his head. “No. I think I would remember meeting such a beautiful lady.”</p>
<p>He expects her to blush or laugh like she used to. Instead, she turns her head away from him.</p>
<p>“I merely wished to thank you again,” she says, not looking at him, “for saving my son’s life. He’s all -“</p>
<p>All I have. She doesn’t finish the sentence, but Rio hears it anyways. He fights his frown.</p>
<p>“As I said, it was nothing.”</p>
<p>Her eyes come back to his. “No.” He can almost hear a hint of anger in the word. “It was not nothing. It was everything to me.”</p>
<p>Rio jerks his head like he’s nodding, then goes to walk by her. He’ll return to the party for a while longer before making his exit. He has a few more pieces of information to drop in certain pairs of ears.</p>
<p>As he does, he steps into the light. He knows she’s looking at him, but he just glances at her briefly, mutters, “Goodnight, my lady,” and walks away, leaving her.</p>
<p>He finishes his tasks for the night, then leaves with a final farewell to Marcus. The boy is growing on him. It’s not until he’s at home that he allows his hands to shake and his breathing to turn frantic.</p>
<p>When he finally manages to fall asleep, he dreams of her again. Of the night on the beach when they had made love, when he had slipped that pathetic twine ring on her finger and thought that it meant a damn thing.</p>
<p>————————————————</p>
<p>Boland has taken the bait with the shipment. Rio smiles to himself as he jumps off the back of the horse. It’s been days since the party and things continue to go as planned.</p>
<p>He waves away the stableboy and cares for the horse himself. It relaxes him, having a task so simple. By the time he walks into the house, he feels almost content.</p>
<p>Rio strides down the hall and shoves the doors to his room open. He stops barely a single step in, frozen at the sight of a woman. She’s facing away, but he knows her in an instant.</p>
<p>“What are you doing here?”</p>
<p>Elizabeth turns towards him. “I knew. The second I saw you, I knew. But I thought that it couldn’t possibly be true because you died.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know who you have mistaken me for -“</p>
<p>“Don’t! Don’t you dare lie to me.”</p>
<p>Rio feels familiar anger settle in his throat. “You presume to tell me what I ought to do?” He storms across the room, capturing her against the desk. She doesn’t even flinch. “You? The woman who didn’t even wait until her bed was cold before marrying another -“</p>
<p>He should have been expecting the slap, should have acted quicker to stop it, but perhaps he wanted to feel a little pain, to know that this was real.</p>
<p>“What was I supposed to do?” Elizabeth asks. There are tears welling up now, slipping down her cheeks. “You were dead, they told me, I attended your funeral, and I was -“</p>
<p>“Desperate?” Rio accuses. “Lonely?”</p>
<p>“I was with child!”</p>
<p>And that, in all of Rio’s planning, had never occurred to him.</p>
<p>“What?”</p>
<p>Elizabeth puts her hand on the cheek that she struck. “Marcus is <i>your</i> son.”</p>
<p>“No.” Rio shakes his head, but already his mind has begun to unearth the similarities that he had been ignoring. “Impossible.”</p>
<p>“I told Dean that he was early. And he was just a little thing, Dean said nothing of it.” Beth strokes his cheek. “But I wept every night, praying that they had been wrong. You couldn’t be dead. I would have known it.”</p>
<p>Her other hand, clenched in a fist, beats his chest.</p>
<p>“You came back to me.”</p>
<p>She stops touching him, reaches into her dress to pull something out and -</p>
<p>It’s the ring. The ring of twine that she had made that night on the beach before he had pressed her back into the sands, before they had conceived their son.</p>
<p>She slips it onto her finger.</p>
<p>Rio grabs her face and kisses her. It’s different now from when they were younger, practically children playing at adulthood.</p>
<p>“You came back,” she says when she starts to cry and has to pull away. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she buries her face in his chest.</p>
<p>The position isn’t comfortable, so Rio bends and lifts her, carries her to his bed and sets her on it. He goes back to close the door, then removes his shoes and joins her. She grabs for him the moment he’s in reach.</p>
<p>“I mourned you for years,” she sobs.</p>
<p>He tries to shush her, stroking her back and arms and anywhere he can reach, really. She’s having none of it.</p>
<p>“Don’t you shush me!” She thumps him on the chest. “Don’t you dare!”</p>
<p>Rio can’t help the burst of laughter at that. She sounds so indignant, just the way that she had when he was away so much as an hour longer than he’d said he would. When he’d promised to dance with her and then tried to refuse, tried to explain that they were not for each other. She’d convinced him and he’d danced with her at every celebration after that until the night he was arrested and taken away.</p>
<p>She lifts her head up and stares at him, watery eyed.</p>
<p>“What?” Rio asks, wiping away her tears.</p>
<p>“Oh, Rio,” she says, throwing her arms around his neck and burrowing into him.</p>
<p>Slowly her sobs fade and he’s left with a wet shirt and his arms full of Elizabeth.</p>
<p>“I’ve missed you so much,” she says after a while.</p>
<p>He swallows. “And I, you.”</p>
<p>Her head comes up from his chest and she raises her hand to touch his cheek.</p>
<p>“I love you,” she whispers. “I never stopped, I swear. The only one I’ve ever loved as much as you is Marcus.”</p>
<p>Rio smiles and takes her hand in his. “I love you.”</p>
<p>She surges up to kiss him and even if Rio wanted to resist, he wouldn’t be able to because it’s this that got him through the years in his prison - the idea of holding her in his arms again. Lying with her again, in a bed this time, just like he had promised after they’d joined on that stretch of beach.</p>
<p>Elizabeth had giggled, burying her face in his chest before peeking up at him through her lashes and asked coyly, “Will it be our bed?”</p>
<p>Rio can’t remember what his reply was. Maybe he hadn’t even been able to come up with one, caught as he was in her eyes.</p>
<p>He doesn’t even try to resist her.</p>
<p>He simply grabs her face and holds her to him, returning her kiss and deepening it.</p>
<p>He needs her.</p>
<p>His hands scramble to undo her gown and when she pushes him away, his heart falls, only for her to take over, doing a much more efficient job of dealing with her laces.</p>
<p>“You do yours,” she commands him.</p>
<p>“Yes, Elizabeth,” he agrees, going for his shirt. He is quite certain that he rips it in his haste to bare his skin to her touch, not even thinking about what she’ll see until she gasps, covering her mouth with her hand.</p>
<p>“What happened to you?” she says, eyes growing wet as she touches the edge of one of his scars.</p>
<p>Rio puts a hand on her cheek to direct her gaze back to his face. “Not tonight,” he begs. “I’ll tell you in the morning, but don’t ask that of me tonight. I need you.”</p>
<p>He sees her jaw firm and for a moment, he thinks she’ll push, but instead, she nods and bends in order to press kisses to his skin.</p>
<p>“Whatever happened to you,” she says, pulling away to remove her dress, “you are mine.”</p>
<p>“Always,” Rio replies, following her to stand next to the bed as they shed their clothing.</p>
<p>He’s only ever seen Elizabeth completely bare once. He had snuck into her bedroom as she was bathing and saw her rising from the water like Aphrodite. She had nearly pushed him out of the window, but he’d coaxed her into letting him look, into letting him kiss her.</p>
<p>That night on the beach, there had been a chill and the sand to contend with.</p>
<p>Nude, she climbs back onto the bed and watches Rio as he sheds the last of his own clothing before joining her.</p>
<p>All he wants to do is touch her, so he lowers his hand to her hip, then strokes upwards.</p>
<p>Rio cups her breast, lifts it towards his mouth.</p>
<p>“You’re beautiful,” he tells her.</p>
<p>Her cheeks turn a familiar pink and she tries to pull up the sheet. She’s shy still. It makes Rio smile and kiss the peak of her breast, then take it in his mouth.</p>
<p>She gasps. When he presses his other hand between her thighs, she’s wet and he groans at the heat of her.</p>
<p>“I need you,” she tells him, pulling his hips towards her.</p>
<p>He has no intention of arguing with that because he doesn’t think he can breathe if he doesn’t have her.</p>
<p>Rio slips inside of her like he never left and it almost overcomes him. She clutches at his shoulders and whimpers.</p>
<p>“I’m hurting you,” he says.</p>
<p>She wraps her legs around him. “Don’t stop.”</p>
<p>“Elizabeth,” he starts to scold her, but then she squeezes around him and arches her back.</p>
<p>“Don’t stop,” she begs and Rio is lost.</p>
<p>He kisses her as he starts to slowly build a rhythm, swallowing her little whimpers and moans as she gets used to him. When she breaks the kiss to cry out, he takes it as permission to deepen his thrusts, quicken his tempo.</p>
<p>“Rio,” she moans, her leg riding up high over his hip to his side until she’s practically kneeing him in the side.</p>
<p>He lifts up a little, just far enough that his hand will fit in between them and he can get his thumb on that little -</p>
<p>She moans, eyes shut when he touches her.</p>
<p>“Rio,” she gasps.</p>
<p>“I’m right here,” he assures her, kissing the corner of her mouth.</p>
<p>Despite her earlier vocals, Elizabeth is entirely silent when she comes. Her eyes stay shut and her hands grip him tighter as he continues to thrust into her.</p>
<p>It doesn’t take him much longer to follow after her, spilling inside of her like he’s been dreaming about for years.</p>
<p>He groans into her neck as her small hands stroke over his back and his head. She’s shushing him now, he realizes, although it’s more of a hum. Nearly a lullaby.</p>
<p>Rio thinks he can be forgiven for falling asleep.</p>
<p>When he wakes, Elizabeth is next to him, spread out on her back, but when he looks over at her, he’s quite sure that he sees her shut her eyes quickly and it makes him smile. Rolling onto his side, Rio strokes his fingers through her hair, fanning it out over his pillow as she pretends to be asleep.</p>
<p>“You can wake up now,” he teases her, kissing the corner of her mouth.</p>
<p>Her laugh is carefree and so is her kiss when she pulls him towards her.</p>
<p>“Make love to me,” she says when she falls back onto the pillow.</p>
<p>Rio smiles, then freezes when a thought occurs to him.</p>
<p>“If there’s a child?”</p>
<p>He regrets it the second that he says it and Elizabeth pulls away.</p>
<p>“Leaving him cannot be done in a day,” she says. “I have to petition the court and it will destroy Marcus.”</p>
<p>“You mean my son,” Rio’s voice is cold, “<i>my</i> son and heir.”</p>
<p>“It would make him a bastard,” Elizabeth reminds him.</p>
<p>“We were married.”</p>
<p>She looks at him. “We promised ourselves to one another, but it wasn’t a marriage, Rio. There were no witnesses, no priest, no -“</p>
<p>“He’s mine.”</p>
<p>She pushes at his chest. “And yet before today you were content to ruin him, destroy him with Dean.”</p>
<p>“I would not have -“</p>
<p>Elizabeth is already sliding out of bed, pulling a sheet with her.</p>
<p>“Elizabeth,” he hastens after her, wrapping his arms around her waist and holding her in place before she can get any farther, “what do you expect me to do? You want me to let the courts handle this? He had me imprisoned. He would have left me to rot in the prison cell. I spent a decade there and you cannot even begin to describe the horrors of that place.”</p>
<p>She turns into him and embraces him.</p>
<p>“I will see him dead.”</p>
<p>“Marcus will hate you,” she whispers.</p>
<p>Rio looks at the painting above his fireplace. “He never knew me. What difference does it make?”</p>
<p>She pulls away at that, staring up at him in shock. “You don’t mean that.”</p>
<p>“No?”</p>
<p>She shakes her head. “No! I saw your face when I told you. You could no sooner hurt him than hurt me.”</p>
<p>“And yet here you are, twisting the knife,” Rio accuses. “You would go back to him, let him take even more time from us. No. I won’t let that happen.”</p>
<p>“Let’s go away.”</p>
<p>“Did you not hear me?” he asks. “He had me thrown in Chateau d’If. I spent years in a prison cell. The only times that I left it were the days that the warden took me out to give me these scars and plenty of other wounds besides.”</p>
<p>He grabs her hand and drags it to rest on one of them.</p>
<p>“You asked last night, what happened to me. That is what happened. I spent our son’s first days rotting in a cell that your husband put me in.”</p>
<p>She’s already in tears.</p>
<p>He lets go of her. “Go.”</p>
<p>“No! I will not let you leave me again,” she grabs his arm, “no matter what you say. I do not care if you think me incapable of hearing what happened to you. I am, Rio. Do you think that it has been easy, living as I have? Perhaps my jail is more ornate, but it has been a prison nonetheless. We’ll run away. Marcus will come with me, long enough for us to explain to him the truth.”</p>
<p>“I will have my revenge, Elizabeth,” Rio snaps at her.</p>
<p>“Then you will not have me.”</p>
<p>He freezes, staring at her.</p>
<p>“It is what kept me alive,” he tells her, “vengeance. I won’t sacrifice it just because you cry and plead me to. I will not allow him to go forward unscathed, as if nothing ever happened. I cannot. Do not ask it of me.”</p>
<p>“Do not ask me to let you go through with this, Rio. I have dreamed, for <i>years</i>, that you would come back.” She wipes at her cheeks. “Sometimes I think that it was the only thing that kept me breathing. That and Marcus. But the man that I loved was not cruel.”</p>
<p>“He was,” Rio says softly. “He just never had reason to show it to you.”</p>
<p>Elizabeth nods. “I’ll leave you then.” Her voice is cool, but he can hear it breaking as she barely clings to the mask she wears as Lady Elizabeth. “I wish you well.”</p>
<p>Rio stands there as she dresses, fisting his hands at his sides as she puts on her chemise. Then, he cannot stand it a moment longer and he flees because he knows that if he stays, if he sees her leaving him, he’ll promise her anything that she asks, just to make her stay just a while longer.</p>
<p>————————————————</p>
<p>“Mother?”</p>
<p>Beth hastily wipes away her tears and smiles over her shoulder at her son. It’s no good, he’s already heard her sob and her boy, her wonderful boy, comes to sit next to her and wraps an arm around her.</p>
<p>She hasn’t been able to stop crying since she left Rio’s side that morning.</p>
<p>“Mother, what is it?”</p>
<p>He looks so much like Rio that it hurts sometimes.</p>
<p>It’s time to tell him.</p>
<p>“You look just like your father,” she says, setting her hand on his cheek.</p>
<p>Marcus’ brows pull together. “I look nothing like Father,” he replies. People have commented on it. Some, speculatively, but no one had ever said anything openly.</p>
<p>Beth laughs softly. “No, Marcus, you look just like your father.”</p>
<p>He blinks, processing what she’s just said and then his eyes widen and he yanks his arm away from her as though he’s been burned. “What are you saying?”</p>
<p>“My husband is not your father, Marcus,” she tells him calmly.</p>
<p>“He is.”</p>
<p>She shakes her head. “No. He is not.”</p>
<p>Marcus stands, staring at her accusation. “So you’re a whore.”</p>
<p>Beth flinches at the accusation, then lifts her chin. “I was with child when I married.”</p>
<p>“Whose?” Marcus demands, starting to pace.</p>
<p>“You’ve met him,” she says. “He has recently come into our lives.”</p>
<p>Marcus rounds on her. “The count?”</p>
<p>Beth nods. “I knew him as Rio. We grew up near to one another. We were in love. We were to be married and then one day, they came to me and said that he was dead, caught attempting treason and killed as he escaped. Dean came calling a week later, to offer his condolences. He continued to call and when he asked me to marry him, I knew that I was pregnant. I was frightened and alone. I said yes.”</p>
<p>Marcus is pale and he backs away from her when she stands.</p>
<p>“That’s not true,” he tries to insist, shaking his head. “You’re lying.”</p>
<p>“Looking at you is like looking at Rio when he was your age,” Beth says, longing to reach out to him, hug him, to do something to comfort him as she unmakes his world.</p>
<p>“No,” Marcus says. “I don’t believe you.”</p>
<p>He turns and storms from the room, leaving Beth alone for the second time today. She takes a shaky breath, hand on her stomach as she tries not to cry yet again. It seems like all she can do these days, although it isn’t as if that’s new. Beth has spent a great many years crying, starting that day that they’d told her Rio was dead.</p>
<p>She’d been nearly delirious with grief until she realized that she was pregnant and her whole world had become about ensuring that she held his child in her arms. And she had. But the sadness had never faded, no matter how much she loved their son. Every little thing that Marcus had done had sent her into tears, always later and in private, because Rio should have been there to see it. He should have had his ship by then. They would have had their cozy life by the sea, just like they had always dreamed.</p>
<p>Beth’s mourning had never truly stopped, not until the night of Marcus’ party, when he had introduced the man who had saved him. A count, he said. Even with the lines of age and the beard, Beth had known his eyes when they met hers. She had thought herself mad, convinced that it must have been the exhaustion from planning.</p>
<p>But then she had sought him out and spoken to him. He had hidden in shadows, but when he had left, Beth had caught a glimpse of him in full light and it was like the years had faded away and she was seated next to him on the beach by one of the bonfires that he and the others had enjoyed.</p>
<p>A few well placed questions and she had the information to seek him out at his home.</p>
<p>Now she knew where he’d been. Not dead, but maybe something worse. The Château had a nightmarish reputation and Rio’s scars were not his only reminders. He’d flinched and muttered in his sleep, only relaxing when she sang to him and rubbed his back like she had done with Marcus when he was a boy.</p>
<p>She’d cried as quietly as she could, not wanting to disturb his sleep.</p>
<p>And it had been Dean who saw them parted. Dean who had ensured that Rio spent more than a decade in prison, who had deprived her of the husband she had wanted more than anything. Deprived them both of raising Marcus.</p>
<p>Deprived Marcus of knowing his true father. It had torn her apart to keep it secret over the years.</p>
<p>And now, now he knew. Beth has a feeling that Marcus will seek Rio out. Her son has always been endlessly curious and despite his protests, he won’t be able to help himself.</p>
<p>Will Rio be kind to him? Will he treat him as his own son or as Dean’s?</p>
<p>Beth takes a shaky breath, shutting her eyes, then gets up to consult with the cook. She must continue on as if life is unchanged.</p>
<p>———————————————————</p>
<p>“I’ll announce myself,” an irritated voice insists a moment before Rio’s office door swings open. He looks up from his ledgers to see Marcus standing there, dripping wet, then glances out the window. Had it been raining long? He hadn’t noticed much after Elizabeth had left that morning.</p>
<p>“What is it?” Rio asks, although he has a guess, considering the way that the boy - his <i>son</i> - is glaring at him.</p>
<p>“Is it true?” Marcus demands, shrugging off Mick’s hand when the man tries to grab him.</p>
<p>Rio raises his hand and Mick steps back, retreating and closing the doors.</p>
<p>“Yes,” Rio says. Even if he had wanted to deny it, it is so very obvious that Marcus could not be Dean’s son.</p>
<p>Marcus crumbles, barely managing to collapse into a chair. “Why?”</p>
<p>That isn’t the question that Rio was expecting. “Why what?”</p>
<p>“Why did you leave her?”</p>
<p>Rio blinks in surprise. “She’s done well enough for herself,” he says.</p>
<p>Marcus’ head comes up, fury renewed. “My mother has been sad all my life. I never knew why. She always made sure that I knew she loved me, but I saw her crying. I saw the way that she tensed around my - around her husband. You’re the reason why.”</p>
<p>“No,” Rio hisses, standing. “That man you’ve called your father is. You think that I left your mother on purpose? Dean Boland always wanted your mother, but she never cared for him. She barely even looked at him, even before we fell in love.” He begins to pace. “He saw me as an obstacle, so he saw to it that I was removed. They told her that I was dead and he took my place.”</p>
<p>“And where were you?” Marcus snaps.</p>
<p>Rio leans against the fireplace, back to Marcus. “Château d’If.” He hears a sharp intake of breath. “I spent most of your life not knowing that you existed, living in a tiny cell with barely a window.”</p>
<p>“You escaped.”</p>
<p>Rio nods. “There was a man. One day, he appeared in my cell from below. He was distraught to realize that he had been digging in the wrong direction for two years.” He has to smile at the memory of the old man. “We became friends. He taught me Latin, philosophy while we dug. He died. I hid in the sack he was supposed to be wrapped in when they threw him to a watery grave. And so, I escaped.”</p>
<p>When he turns, Marcus looks confused. “How did you get all this?” he asks, gesturing around them. “You weren’t a rich man.”</p>
<p>“It turned out that my co-conspirator was in prison for having hidden away a great deal of money,” Rio says. “He told me where to find it. I found it. I came back and your mother was gone.”</p>
<p>“You wanted vengeance,” Marcus guesses.</p>
<p>Rio nods.</p>
<p>“Mama doesn’t want you to pursue it.”</p>
<p>“No,” Rio admits. “She has said that for me to pursue it is to lose her.” He puts his hands behind his back.</p>
<p>Marcus nods, like he expected no less. “She means it.”</p>
<p>Rio grimaces. “I know.” Like all of his energy has suddenly fled, he collapses into a chair by the fire. “Your mother has always been the most stubborn woman.”</p>
<p>There’s quiet for a moment and then Rio realizes that Marcus is hovering by the other chair, so he nods and waves for him to sit.</p>
<p>“Do you love her?”</p>
<p>The answer is on the tip of his tongue. Yes. But he stays silent.</p>
<p>“You do,” Marcus concludes. “She has loved you all the years that you were gone, believing you to be dead. You knew that she was alive, you had something to hope for. If you do this, you’ll break her heart.”</p>
<p>Rio says nothing.</p>
<p>“And then I’ll have to kill you for hurting her.”</p>
<p>Rio can’t stop the smile that spreads over his face at that and he chuckles. “You are your mother’s son above all else, I think. Bloodthirsty like she is.”</p>
<p>“Mother?” Marcus scoffs.</p>
<p>“She’s alarmingly good with a knife,” Rio says, the memory of her holding a knife to his ribs after he crept into her room one night.</p>
<p>After she realized it was him, she’d kept holding it to his ribs, but eventually, she’d let him see her naked. He had left for a few weeks after that, but the memory had him hard and aching the whole time.</p>
<p>“What will it take for you to leave it?”</p>
<p>Rio blinks, coming out of the memory to see Marcus studying him. “I won’t.”</p>
<p>“That’s not true!” Marcus replies, hitting the arm of the chair.</p>
<p>“It is,” Rio says, calm. “Besides, it’s too late now.”</p>
<p>“What’s that supposed to mean?” Marcus asks.</p>
<p>“It means that you should go home to your mother, Marcus,” he replies, standing. “She needs you.”</p>
<p>——————————————————————</p>
<p>Rio isn’t sure what he expects to happen after Marcus storms out, but it certainly isn’t Elizabeth’s return to his bedroom.</p>
<p>“What are you doing here?” he demands.</p>
<p>“Have you had your vengeance yet?” she asks, moving towards him. She undoes his jacket with deft fingers and is halfway down his shirt before he stops her.</p>
<p>“Elizabeth,” he warns.</p>
<p>Tilting her head back, she looks him in the eye. “Until the day that your vengeance is complete, I will have you.”</p>
<p>Rio sinks into a chair, pulling her close so that he can rest his head against her belly. “You would be so cruel?”</p>
<p>“Cruel?” She strokes over his head.</p>
<p>“To give me what I have longed for every night for years, then take it away?”</p>
<p>“I thought you longed for revenge.” She steps away from him.</p>
<p>“I did,” Rio says. “I do!”</p>
<p>“And I am telling you that for now, you may have both.” She begins to undo her dress.</p>
<p>“Elizabeth,” he pushes himself out of his chair and grabs her hands, “please.”</p>
<p>“Please what, Rio?” She pulls her hands from his so that she can set them on his cheeks. “What?”</p>
<p>His breath is harsh as he shuts his eyes, unable to meet her gaze as he begs her, “Please don’t leave me.”</p>
<p>She sighs and wraps her arms around him. “My love,” she murmurs into his chest, “take me to bed.”</p>
<p>He doesn’t. Instead, he takes her to the rug by the fireplace.</p>
<p>“It reminds me of that night on the beach,” he says, watching the flames flicker over her face. “When you gave me yourself.”</p>
<p>“When you gave me our boy,” she replies, stepping out of everything but her innermost layer of clothing. “As soon as I realized, I was so happy.”</p>
<p>She drops her hand to her belly and smiles.</p>
<p>“I should have been there,” Rio tells her. “You should not have had to face the choice between doing it alone or marrying him.”</p>
<p>“You were with me,” she says. “That’s why I was happy. They told me that you were dead but I had part of you with me always. If not for Marcus, I don’t know what I would have done.”</p>
<p>Rio gathers her up in his arms. “Don’t talk like that,” he scolds her. “You would have been strong. Just as you always have been.”</p>
<p>He kisses her then, taking her to the floor and pulling away her last layer.</p>
<p>The night before, he hadn’t savoured it, hadn’t been able to. But tonight, he had every intention of drawing it out.</p>
<p>Dawn came without either of them having slept, although Rio was more used to the lack of sleep than she was.</p>
<p>“I’ll be exhausted today,” she tells him sheepishly as he helps her dress again.</p>
<p>“Tell them that your dreams kept you awake,” Rio teases.</p>
<p>She shakes her head, looking at him over her shoulder.</p>
<p>Rio ducks his head to kiss her.</p>
<p>“I love you,” she says, setting her hand over his where it rests on her hip.</p>
<p>Rio shuts his eyes, presses his forehead to hers. “And I love you,” he whispers.</p>
<p>He sees her off with a few more stolen kisses and the moment that she’s gone, he wants to race after her.</p>
<p>“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you as happy as you look now,” Mick comments at breakfast. “Do right by her.”</p>
<p>Rio glares at the other man.</p>
<p>Around mid-day, he receives a message from one of his agents.</p>
<p>
  <i>B opened cases, all empty. B furious.</i>
</p>
<p>His plan is unfolding beautifully. Boland is now learning that his usual lenders have closed their doors to him. It was amazing what one could achieve just by promising to pay another man’s debts.</p>
<p>Boland would be feeling more and more trapped. Creditors would be closing in, threatening to take everything that they legally could. And Boland did not have many friends in the courts. He would be ruined. The name that he’d boasted about when they were younger, the one he’d tried to lure Elizabeth with, would become worth less than the empty barrels that filled Rio’s warehouses, the ones that he’d drawn the man’s attention to, convinced him were worthy of stealing.</p>
<p>Dean Boland’s greed and desperation had always been something that Rio could count on.</p>
<p>He leans back in his chair and studies the ceiling. Elizabeth had asked him to stop. To leave Boland to his natural fate. He had refused, but perhaps there was another option. In exchange for granting Elizabeth a divorce, Rio would wipe away his debts.</p>
<p>Just the thought of it made him fist his hand on the arms of the chair, but then he sees her face, smiling up at him, imagines her hands on his shoulders, her lips on his. She ruins him, unmakes him. Always has, ever since he saw her. She was always made to be his just as he’d been made for her.</p>
<p>“Damn you, Elizabeth,” he mutters, then gets up to find Mick. They’ll need to pay a visit to Boland’s bankers first.</p>
<p>He glances out the window looking out onto the fields and sees a horse racing towards the house. Frowning, he squints to try and make out the rider. A cold feeling takes hold of him.</p>
<p>Rio makes it to the stable at the same time as the horse, which bears a young woman in near hysterics.</p>
<p>“Your master must come quickly,” she sobs to the stableboy, who looks terrified.</p>
<p>Rio pulls the woman away and turns her so that she’s facing him. “What’s happening? Who are you?”</p>
<p>“You must come,” she says, gripping his shirt. “My lady, she sent me to you. Her husband came home in a rage. He was shouting about you, about how he was going to kill her.”</p>
<p>Even before she finishes talking, Rio’s opening the stall with his fastest horse and jumping onto his back. There isn’t time for a saddle.</p>
<p>“Take her to the kitchen,” Rio barks to the stableboy, “and send Mick after me.”</p>
<p>He curses himself the whole way there for insisting that he live so far away from the Boland home. He hadn’t wanted to risk running into them often, but now, every moment fills him with more dread, even once the house is in sight.</p>
<p>Someone comes out of the stables, clearly having seen him, but Rio rides right to a set of doors that will let him slip into the back of the house. He glances back the way he came and sees a shape in the distance. Mick. He doesn’t have time to wait for him to catch up.</p>
<p>The man who came from the stables catches up to him.</p>
<p>“There’s a man behind me,” Rio tells him. “Tell him I’ve gone inside.”</p>
<p>With that, he turns and plunges into the house. It’s only after he takes a few steps that he realizes that perhaps he should not be so loud and softens his step.</p>
<p>The kitchens are empty, or at least, so he thinks. Movement from behind him has him pulling the only weapon that he has - a long knife - from his belt and moving to stop his attacker. But it’s just a cook.</p>
<p>“They’re in the dining room,” the woman whispers, pointing.</p>
<p>Rio stays his hand and nods. “Are there multiple ways in?”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>He jerks his head back where he came. “Go to the back door. My man should be here any minute. Take him to one of those other entrances.”</p>
<p>The cook is frozen.</p>
<p>“If you care about your mistress, do what I say,” he snaps. That seems to make up her mind and she runs.</p>
<p>Rio has only visited the house once, at Marcus’ party, and he had not received a tour. He has, however, paid a number of people to map it out for him. He knows where the dining room is, knows the hall that connects it to the kitchen. The moment that he pushes open the door to it, he can hear a man shouting. He quickens his pace.</p>
<p>He’d had time on his ride to think his plan through, but all he had decided was that his goal was to take Boland’s attention off of Elizabeth. All that mattered to him was her safety. He puts the knife back into his belt, moving it so that it’s behind his back so that Boland won’t be able to see it.</p>
<p>Rio pushes the door to the dining room open and steps in.</p>
<p>“So there he is,” Boland spits. He seems to have expected Rio’s arrival.</p>
<p>“Here I am,” Rio agrees.</p>
<p>“You think that I’ll just let you take her?” Boland shouts. He has a pistol and Rio has to assume that it’s loaded, primed to shoot. Elizabeth is seated, pale but for the thin line of blood on her neck. Rio would guess that it’s her blood on the blade that Boland’s holding in his other hand.</p>
<p>But she doesn’t seem panicked. She seems almost calm. Resigned.</p>
<p>Rio hates it. He has to kill time in order for Mick to make his way to the room and surprise Boland. And where’s Marcus? He doesn’t want the boy to be caught in this.</p>
<p>“Your quarrel is with me,” Rio calls out.</p>
<p>“I know. You’ve bankrupted me, you know!”</p>
<p>Rio winces.</p>
<p>“And it seems that my wife has been a whore for a very long time,” Boland goes on. “I take it that my son is yours as well.”</p>
<p>“Don’t hurt him,” Elizabeth begs, calling her husband’s attention back to her. “Marcus has done nothing. The fault is mine and mine alone. I deceived you.”</p>
<p>“And now you’ve come to take her away too?” Boland laughs. “No. Even if they come and take everything else that is left, you will not have her. So which of you should I kill? I’m tempted to say her. After all, it would be so easy. But you? You I so very much want to kill.”</p>
<p>“But still,” Boland steps closer to his wife, “I think it would pain you more if you were to see her die first.”</p>
<p>“If you touch her or harm her in any way,” Rio warns, “I will tear you apart slowly. What the gods did to Prometheus will look like a kindness by the time that I am finished with you.”</p>
<p>Boland laughs, sways a little. He’s drunk. Rio needs to get him away from Elizabeth.</p>
<p>“And your quarrel is with me,” Rio says. “I’m the one who bankrupted you. I’m the one that ensured your investments would fail. It was easy. You’ve managed to keep very few friends in the years I’ve been gone.”</p>
<p>He’s expecting Boland to turn on him then, but the man grins. “All that this tells me,” he sneers, “is that you’re still in love with her.” He lifts his hand, still holding the blade, intent on hurting Elizabeth. Rio starts to move, but someone else gets there first, slashing Boland’s arm.</p>
<p>The man screams and fires his pistol before he drops it, clutching at his arm, which is pouring blood from the wound that Marcus, now snatching his mother from her chair and dragging her away, had dealt him.</p>
<p>Rio grabs the man and looks him in the eye. “You lose,” he whispers and slides his own knife into the other man’s heart. Rio lets him crumple to the ground and turns to look for Elizabeth and Marcus, to ensure that they haven’t been harmed.</p>
<p>He sways slightly and frowns as he begins to feel a pain radiate from his arm. He looks down and sees his sleeve has begun to turn red around the hole that Boland’s pistol had blown through it. And through his arm.</p>
<p>He stumbles and overbalances, falling to the ground.</p>
<p>He hears a woman’s scream and before he can assure her that he’s fine, Beth runs over to him, dropping to the ground and crying out when she sees the blood on his sleeve. “Rio,” she says, shaking him. “Rio, you cannot die now.”</p>
<p>Rio laughs, although her shaking is jostling his arm. He reaches out with his other hand and grabs both of hers. “It’s only a graze,” he says.</p>
<p>“What does that mean?” She tugs her hands away and inspects his arm where the bullet tore his shirt and nicked him.</p>
<p>“It means we wash the wound,” Mick tells her, pulling her away gently. When had he arrived? “Might take a stitch or two, but he’ll be right as rain.”</p>
<p>Rio lets Mick help him up and sees Marcus hovering a few feet away, arm wrapped around his mother. Once upright, Rio murmurs his thanks to Mick and waves off his help to walk to Elizabeth and Marcus. He takes her face in his good hand, leans down, and kisses her.</p>
<p>“I love you,” he says.</p>
<p>She smiles. “I love you.”</p>
<p>Rio presses their foreheads together and sighs before lifting his head and turning to Marcus. Letting go of Elizabeth, he clasps his hand around the back of Marcus’ neck and pulls him in to repeat the touch of their foreheads.</p>
<p>“I’m proud of you,” Rio tells him. “You were very brave and you saved your mother’s life.”</p>
<p>Marcus smiles, then seems to remember how he had done that and sobers.</p>
<p>He glances towards the body, but Rio stops him. “No,” he says. “You don’t need to see it. Not yet.”</p>
<p>“I’m not a child,” Marcus mumbles, but he doesn’t look. Instead, he escorts his mother to the kitchen, where Mick begins to clean the wound.</p>
<p>Rio tries to convince Elizabeth to leave, but she refuses to even let go of his hand. After the fifth time that he suggests it, she finally snaps, “I am not leaving your side, do not dare ask it again.”</p>
<p>He shuts up after that. It takes a few stitches to close the wound, like Mick had said it might and in that time, someone has come to deal with Boland’s body.</p>
<p>“I want to go home,” Rio comments when they’re finished bandaging him up.</p>
<p>Mick shakes his head. “You should stay here. I don’t want to jostle the wound.”</p>
<p>“I don’t want to stay in this house,” he says, getting a squeeze from Elizabeth.</p>
<p>“Please, my love,” she says, other hand coming up to stroke his brow. “Stay here. We’ll stay in my chambers.”</p>
<p>He stiffens at the thought of it - staying in rooms where Elizabeth had been with -</p>
<p>Like she knows what he’s thinking, she shakes her head and leans close to whisper, “He never visited me in them.”</p>
<p>When she pulls away, he meets her eye.</p>
<p>“Fine,” he allows. “But just for the night.”</p>
<p>She smiles at him and kisses his brow like a mother tending to a sick child. Rio scowls at her, but it just makes her laugh. “You must be on the mend already,” she teases, “to be glaring at me so.”</p>
<p>It ends up being more than one night that Rio has to stay and Elizabeth refuses to budge when he tries to insist that he’s fine.</p>
<p>“I will not lose you,” she shouts, “because you are too much of a fool to listen to those who are better judges of your condition than you. You will sit there and you will rest!”</p>
<p>Marcus, who happens to be present, sinks in a chair beside Rio’s bed and murmurs to Rio, “You’d best do what she says.”</p>
<p>It is shockingly easy to attain a marriage license, despite how recently Elizabeth was widowed, although she makes him wait until he’s healed to do it.</p>
<p>He knows that rumours are swirling about the two of them, but when he asks Marcus about it, his son just shrugs.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Elizabeth frets through the move into his house.</p>
<p>“It’s too grand,” she complains.</p>
<p>Rio just kisses her quiet.</p>
<p>“Too big.”</p>
<p>“We’ll fill it up, then,” Rio tells her. “You always said you wanted a dozen children.” He grins at her as she flushes.</p>
<p>He’s pretending that he hasn’t seen her stitching little baby clothes because she hasn’t said a thing to him about it.</p>
<p>She ignores him and climbs into bed, waiting for him to follow.</p>
<p>“I love you,” she says when he does.</p>
<p>“And I love you,” Rio replies, lifting her hand to kiss the pair of rings she wears - the costly one he’d longed to get for her and the one made of twine.</p>
<p>———————————————————</p>
<p>“Elizabeth,” Rio nearly growls her name when he sees her coming out of the stables.</p>
<p>She simply smiles at him. “How are you this morning?”</p>
<p>“You aren’t supposed to be riding,” he starts to say, only for her to cut him off.</p>
<p>“I wasn’t,” she says, patting his chest. “I was visiting my horse. I do listen to physicians, even if I don’t listen to you.”</p>
<p>Rio shakes his head, but he’s smiling as he does it.</p>
<p>“Where’s Marcus?” she asks, taking his hand and leading him back to the house.</p>
<p>“With his friends, no doubt,” Rio says with a sigh. Marcus is a social creature, always looking to spend time with his peers. It makes him happy to see his son so at ease with people, but he does wish that the boy would indulge Elizabeth and return home for a meal from time to time.</p>
<p>She laughs. “I think that you might be wrong today, my love. Look.”</p>
<p>Rio looks where she’s pointing and sees their son running around the library with his sister perched on his shoulders, tugging his hair. He sighs. “Must they make so much noise?” he half-heartedly complains. “I do have business to conduct.”</p>
<p>“After we eat, I’m sure she’ll collapse for her nap,” Elizabeth tells him. “She always does.”</p>
<p>He smiles at her as they enter the house. Mercedes is nearly identical to Elizabeth in her manner, for all that she looks like him. Always insisting that she’s not tired, only to fall asleep in her chair within moments. Always insisting that she could get things for herself, only to attempt to climb up his bookshelves and tumble down. Rio’s still relieved that she’d had nothing more than a few bruises after that.</p>
<p>“She’s far too adventurous,” Rio comments.</p>
<p>His wife scoffs. “She is not,” she responds.</p>
<p>The sounds of laughter get closer until Marcus comes bursting into the hall.</p>
<p>“Mercedes,” Rio calls out.</p>
<p>Her eyes widen, seeing him and Elizabeth standing there and she claps her hand over her mouth.</p>
<p>Rio walks over and plucks her from her brother’s shoulders and holding her to his chest looks down at her. She’s opening her eyes wider and he can only imagine what she intends to try and say.</p>
<p>“I thought that was a game that <i>we</i> played,” he says.</p>
<p>She grins up at him, showing the spot where her tooth is missing. “Sorry, Papa,” she chirps, then cuddles against him. “You’re my favourite horsie,” she assures him. He can hear Elizabeth laughing as he carries Mercedes towards the dining room.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>As always, thank you to medievalraven and neveroffanon for indulging me and beta-ing this. I hope you enjoy it! If there's other content that should be warned for or if you think that the warnings need to be more clear, please let me know.</p>
<p>Inspired by Alexandre Dumas' "The Count of Monte Cristo", via the 2002 movie with Jim Caviezel, Guy Pearce, and a baby Henry Cavill.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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